David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940 to a streetcar driver and a minister’s daughter. He is the author of seven books of poems, eight plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, dozens of essays, introductions, speeches and book reviews, the libretto for an opera and is a performance poet on two CDs. He was for a time a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. David passed away of Parkinson's disease in 2016.
New England mountain recluse's poems reminiscent of those of the great Chinese and Taoist poet-sages.
Budbill both informs and moves. He is, in short, a delight and a comfort. --Wendell Berry
David Budbill is a no-nonsense, free-range sage. --Dana Jennings, The New York Times
Looking at the reality closely, he sees parts move in a unison--sometimes graceless, sometimes ugly, always resolved in a human wholeness. --Donald Hall
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Broken Wing is the story of one man's love for birds and efforts to save a rusty blackbird that can't fly south for the winter.
"David Budbill is a no-nonsense free-range sage who celebrates tomatoes in September, the whistle of a woodcock and sweet black tea and ancient Chinese poems." --"New York Times"
Familiar to listeners of National Public Radio, David Budbill is beloved by legions for straightforward poems dispatched from his hermitage on Judevine Mountain. Inspired by classical Chinese hermit poets, he follows tradition but cannot escape the complications and struggles of a modern solitary existence.
A "tale of the tribe" (Ezra Pound's phrase for his own longer work), Park Songs is set in a down-and-out Midwestern park where people from all walks of life gather. In this small green space surrounded by a great gray city, the park provides a refuge for its caretaker (and resident poet), street preachers, retirees, moms, hustlers, and teenagers.